Ten Ahead is in the Tatler Address Book

We are delighted to share that Ten Ahead has been listed in the Tatler Address Book - see it here

It is a lovely thing to be recognised, and we are proud of it. But a press announcement on its own is not much use to you, and this is a decision most people make once. So rather than write four paragraphs about how pleased we are, we have written the piece we wish had existed when our own clients were looking.

Here is what the Tatler Address Book actually is, what a listing does and does not tell you, and the ten questions worth asking any lifestyle management company before you appoint one. The last part is the useful bit. It is worth saving.

What the Tatler Address Book is

The Tatler Address Book is Condé Nast's curated directory of trusted professionals and services, published by Tatler and updated annually. It covers the categories its readers actually need recommendations in: private client advisers and lawyers, cosmetic doctors and health practitioners, schools and education consultants, travel, weddings, country and sporting, and lifestyle and concierge services.

It exists because of a specific problem. When you are looking for a family lawyer, a paediatric specialist, a school consultant or a lifestyle manager, the internet is close to useless. The search results are dominated by whoever spends most on advertising, the review sites are thin, and in a discreet category the best firms are often the quietest. So people ask friends. The Address Book is essentially that, formalised: a shortlist assembled by editors who spend their working lives around this market, rather than by an algorithm.

Two things worth understanding about it.

Inclusion is editorial, and it is selective. Firms are assessed on reputation, standing in their category and relevance to the readership. It is not a directory you can simply appear in by asking.

It is not a regulator. The Address Book is an editorial recommendation, not an accreditation or a clinical register. It tells you a firm is credible enough to be shortlisted by people who know the market well. It cannot tell you whether that firm is right for your particular life. That part is still your job, and it is the part this article is really about.

What a listing does and doesn't tell you

A good directory listing is a filter, not an answer. It narrows the field from everyone to a handful. Used well, it saves you weeks. Used badly, it becomes a substitute for the questions you should be asking.

The distinction matters especially in lifestyle management, because it is an unregulated category with enormous variation inside it. Two companies can describe themselves in almost identical language on their websites and deliver completely different things. One is a call centre with a members' app and a supplier list. Another is a single senior person who knows your daughter's teacher's name, your father's consultant, and which of your three houses has a boiler about to fail.

Both will use the words "bespoke", "discreet" and "tailored". Only one of them is what you are actually looking for.

So here is how to tell them apart.

Ten questions to ask before you appoint a lifestyle manager

Ask these of anyone you are considering, including us. The answers are more revealing than any brochure.

1. Who exactly will do the work, and will it be the same person in two years?

This is the single most important question and the one most often skipped. Ask for a name. Ask how long that person has been with the firm. Ask what happens when they are on holiday, and what happens if they leave. The entire value of this relationship is accumulated context: someone knowing your life well enough to act without being briefed. If the person changes every eight months, you will spend the rest of your life briefing.

2. How many clients does that person look after?

A lifestyle manager holding forty relationships is running a queue. One holding a small handful is running your life. Neither answer is automatically wrong, but the number tells you what you are actually buying, and a firm that will not tell you the number has told you the number.

3. Is the model request-led or ownership-led?

Here is the test. If you said nothing at all for two weeks, what would happen? With a request-led service, nothing happens, because nothing was asked for. With an ownership model, the renewals go through, the school deadline is met, the trip in six weeks gets built, and the plumber comes back to finish the job. Ask them to describe a normal week in which the client made no requests. If they cannot, it is a concierge, whatever the website says. We have written about the difference in more depth in lifestyle manager vs personal assistant.

4. How do you charge, and what does the fee actually buy?

There are three common models: hourly, retained, and membership plus transaction fees. What you want to understand is not just the number but the incentive. Hourly billing rewards time spent. Membership plus fees rewards volume of requests. A retained relationship rewards your life running smoothly, which is the only outcome you actually want. Ask what happens in a quiet month and in a chaotic one.

5. Do you take commission from the suppliers you recommend?

Ask this one directly and watch the answer. Plenty of firms in this space earn from the hotels, contractors, agencies and services they place you with. That is not automatically improper, but it is a conflict of interest and you deserve to know it exists, because it shapes every recommendation you receive. The right answer is a straight one, either way.

6. What actually happens at eleven o'clock on a Sunday night?

Almost everyone advertises out-of-hours support. Fewer can tell you who picks up, whether that person knows you, and what they are empowered to decide without waking someone else. Ask for a real example from the last month.

7. What is your client retention rate?

In a relationship-based business, retention is the honest metric. Marketing can win a client. Only the work keeps one. Ask for the figure over five years, not one. Ours is 100%.

8. How do you handle confidentiality, and how are your people vetted?

Discretion should be a working condition, not a selling point. Ask about NDAs as standard, how information is compartmentalised internally, how staff are vetted and referenced, and where your data lives. In practice, the best answer is slightly boring, because good confidentiality is a process, not a promise.

9. Will you work alongside the people already around me?

Most people at this stage of life already have an EA, a wealth manager, a lawyer, household staff, perhaps a nanny and a school. A good lifestyle office becomes the connective layer between them rather than a competing tenth relationship. Ask how they handle the handover with an existing EA. It is a genuinely tricky piece of choreography and the answer will tell you how experienced they are.

10. What do the first thirty days look like?

Vague onboarding is the clearest warning sign there is, because it usually means the work never really gets owned. You want to hear something specific: how they learn your world, who they meet, what systems get built, what comes off your plate in week one. Ours is set out on our How it Works page.

One bonus question, and it is the one we would ask: who reads my enquiry? If the answer is a sales team, you have learned something about how the relationship will feel for the next five years.

Where Ten Ahead sits

We are a private lifestyle office in Mayfair, London, and we have been doing this for over a decade.

Our founder, Georgina Williamson, spent her career as a Chief of Staff and trusted adviser before starting Ten Ahead, and the company came out of something she noticed in that work. Businesses give their leaders one trusted partner whose whole job is to remove friction and protect their time. Almost nobody has that at home, where life is frequently more demanding. The people who spend their lives looking after everyone else are usually the ones with nobody looking after them.

So that is what we built. We call it a Chief of Life: one senior person who carries the full shape of your world and runs it with the rigour a Chief of Staff brings to a business. Travel, household, family, health, education, and the thinking that connects them. You can read the whole story on our About page, and how the office model works on our Private Lifestyle Office page.

We would encourage you to put all ten questions to us. We would also encourage you to put them to everyone else on your shortlist, including the firms listed alongside us in the Address Book. A category this personal should be chosen carefully, and the firms worth appointing are the ones that welcome the scrutiny.

If you are at the start of that process

Being listed in the Tatler Address Book is a useful signal, and we are grateful for it. But the thing we are actually proud of is quieter and harder to print: clients who have been with us for years, families whose lives run without them having to hold every thread, and the moment someone pauses and says, "I hadn't realised how much I needed that."

If you are somewhere near the start of this, our FAQ page covers most of what people want to know before they get in touch, from how engagements are priced to how we work with existing staff.

And when you are ready, start a conversation. Every enquiry is read personally by Georgie.

Because life was never meant to be carried alone.